1905 Saurian Expedition

In May and June of 1905, Annie Alexander participated in (and financed) a paleontological expedition to the West Humboldt Mountains in Nevada, exploring the Triassic limestones of the region. The expedition, under the auspices of Professor John C. Merriam and led by Geologicial Assistant Eustace Furlong, was a great success; portions of twenty-five specimens of ichthyosaur, including some of the largest in the world and the most complete ever found in North America (up to that time), were brought back to Berkeley.

Miss Alexander later wrote an account of it, illustrated with her own photographs (and some of Merriam’s), which is now in the UCMP archives. Annie’s account, a scrapbook, was probably presented to the museum following her death in 1950.2

For over a century, only a handful of researchers have had access to Alexander’s scrapbook, but the text has now been transcribed and the photographs scanned. These have been combined into a single document that can now be viewed online or downloaded:

In May of 2017, UCMP retiree David K. Smith made a trip to the West Humboldt Mountains to revisit the area explored by the Berkeley crew 112 years earlier. Smith has written a description of his adventure that contains a number of “then and now” photographs:

Seven people participated in the Saurian Expedition of 1905. Biographies on Alexander and Merriam already exist on this website (see links in first paragraph) but what about the others? Learn more about them:

From Annie Montague Alexander Papers, Volume 1, Series 3. “We chose the site of a deserted miner’s cabin for our camping ground.”From Annie Montague Alexander Papers, Volume 1, Series 3. “We were still at work on the S.W. slope when Prof. Smith of Stanford joined us for a week’s ammonite-hunt …. Now Prof. Smith is a very enthusiastic man. He claims that Heaven has no attractions for him unless there are ammonites there and be they stout or thin, spiney or smooth, he handles them alike lovingly and searches for them untiringly.”

From Annie Montague Alexander Papers, Volume 1, Series 3. “Little by little the blocks were marked and wrapped and packed down to camp on the backs of our horses.”From Annie Montague Alexander Papers, Volume 1, Series 3. “For two days I watched with fascinated eyes the work of excavation.”

A letter Alexander wrote to UCMP’s Ruben A. Stirton dated March 27, 1949, would suggest that she was still in possession of the scrapbook at that time. She told of a small reunion of the Saurian Expedition of 1905 participants: “I had my book of photos and Mrs. McDonald [Edna Wemple] read aloud my account of the trip and we had a grand time recalling incidents of the trip.”

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